Lebanon has “summarily deported” at least 16 Syrians, some of them registered refugees, by forcing them to sign “voluntary repatriation forms,” human rights groups said on Friday. Lebanon hosts nearly one million Syrian refugees -- a significant burden for a country of four million people -- and there has been mounting pressure for them to go home even though the UN says many areas remain unsafe. The 16 were all removed to Syria on April 26 after they arrived at Beirut ...

A British journalist working for Sky News reported on Thursday that her team was deliberately shelled by Syrian forces, while an activist they were travelling with was hit by shrapnel. “We were spotted by a military drone and then repeatedly shot at with what we believe were 125 mm shells probably fired from a T-72 Russian battle tank,” special news correspondent Alex Crawford said on the Sky News website. “As we retreated to leave the area, the targeting of us continued,&rdquo ...

Syrian government aircraft bombed several towns in northwestern Syria on Thursday killing five civilians as troops and militia battled extremists on the ground, a monitor said. The new bombardment of the largely extremist-controlled region of Idlib followed strikes on Tuesday night and Wednesday that killed 23 civilians, 12 of them at a busy market. In neighboring Hama province, Syrian troops battled for a third straight day to repel an extremist counterattack around the town of Kafr Nabuda, ...

The Syrian army shot down a drone loaded with bombs near Hama’s airport, Syrian state TV said late on Wednesday. The drone was launched by al-Nusra Front militants, the state television added. No further details were immediately available. On Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that militants based in Idlib had also launched a missile attack on Russia’s Hmeymim air base, but that their missiles were either shot down or did not reach their target.

An Italian man held hostage in Syria for almost three years has been freed, the Italian prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement said Italian intelligence, police and the foreign ministry had worked together to secure the release of Alessandro Sandrini – a 32-year-old from the northern city of Brescia. Sandrini flew to Turkey in October 2016 for a holiday but soon disappeared. A year later, he called his family, telling them he had been seized off a ...

Syrian opposition fighters said Wednesday they recaptured a village on the edge of their stronghold in northwestern Syria that had been seized two weeks earlier by government forces in an offensive that wrecked a months-old cease-fire in the densely populated area. The capture of Kfar Nabuda by government forces on May 8 was the most serious challenge to the cease-fire in Idlib province and surrounding areas negotiated by Russia and Turkey in September. It was the first ground advance by ...

Thousands of documents purportedly collected from abandoned Syrian government offices during the country’s civil war reveal the reach of President Bashar Assad’s shadowy, labyrinthine security agencies as they spied on the population at large, sought to eliminate dissidents at all cost and systematically persecuted the Kurdish minority even before the onset of protests. The documents were the basis of a report released Tuesday by Washington-based Syria Justice and Accountability ...

Syrian government troops on Wednesday morning repelled three big attacks by militants in Syria’s Idlib province, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. It said in a statement that 500 Nusra front militants, seven tanks, and about 30 pickups mounted with heavy machine guns had taken part in the attacks. The ministry said that Syrian militants based in Idlib had also launched a missile attack on Russia’s Hmeymim air base on Wednesday, but that their missiles were either shot down or did ...

Air strikes by the Syrian regime or its ally Moscow killed 12 civilians in a market in Syria’s Idlib province, a monitor said Wednesday, as fierce fighting raged for the militant-held northwestern region.Another 18 people were wounded when the warplanes hit the militant-held town of Maarat al-Numan around midnight (2100 GMT) on Tuesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.The market was crowded with people out and about after breaking the daytime fast observed by ...